Michelle Franklin's Blog, page 40

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 3

Feidhlim sat in the dismal throes of ruined ambitions, his expression disconsolate, his heart irreconcilable: he had angered his father, had disappointed and disobeyed him, and what was worse than the father’s aggravation was the mortification he was made to suffer for rousing his father’s displeasure. He had come home to be sanguine and gratified by his sons, but his indulgence of their strident animation had been tried, and Feidhlim had thus destroyed all his father’s expectations of findin...

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 2

While the strike had not been of a sort to damage, the action itself had been enough to stun Feidhlim into submission. The boy instantly bowed his head and said a most woeful, “…I’m sorry, Da,” before turning toward the rest of his siblings with downcast eyes and speaking an apology that was as mortifying to remark as it was to offer. Ossin and Irall, still under the dread of their father’s petrifying calm, softly refuted their brother’s apology, needing none for the few moments of...

Story for the Day: Fraternal Sentry - Part 1

T.H. White said it best when he said, "It is so fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible," one of my favourite quotes from The Witch and the Wood. It is frightfully easy, and while parents may think that a punishment has little lasting effect on their children, even a cruel word from a parent they love is the end of the world for a child.
Gaumhin MacLachlann, one of the Captains of the Royal Guard in Diras, first understood this when he was fourteen. He...

Story for the Day: Cultivation

Cultivating fruits in Frewyn begins at an early age. 
Westren, being the warmest municipality in Frewyn, situated at the base of the northern Menorian Mountains, championed in the splendor of first spring: the warm gales caroming down the mountainside leaped over the Westren Wall and flushed across the lowlands, blanketing the prospect from TussNaTullin to Tyr Bryn with a wave of verdency, garnishing the landscape with varying hues, their delicate blooms scintillating with vibrancy under...

Story for the Day: Accent

Frewyn is home to many different accents, but the accent from TussNaTullin, the Gaeltacht of Westren, is so different that it might as well be its own language. Many folk who grow up in TussNaTullin, like Sir Gaumhin did, have no idea that their particular brand of speech is nigh unintelligible to those outside of their village until forced to venture beyond its borders. In Gaumhin's case, he was raised in TussNaTullin's orphanage and placed into a foster home when he was fourteen,...

Kai Linaa and the Butterfly

A new image that Twisk is working on for the upcoming Tales from Frewyn Vol. 2!

Story for the Day: Factotum

Langliegh is sort of a factotum around the keep: he does the carpenting, the blacksmithing, the leatherworking,  among many other things, and while his work is always valued and appreciated, he still gets disgruntled when something he made breaks.


At last he came to the door of the workshoppe, and where he was expecting to find Langleigh working the bellows of his forge, he found the craftsman sitting at the bodger’s counter, hammering away at a bracing piece and grumbling something...

Story for the Day: Pride in One's Work

There are many who might consider housekeeping a chore, but to the king's Thegn, it's a matter of pride:
The evening work over, the maids and servants and craftsmen in the keep retired to the bothan and servants quarters, resigning themselves to a well deserved rest, and the king’s cares seen to, the dinner agreeably spent and the quiet revelry of late gloaming gone through, Searle could fuss and fidget over Aghatha’s account of a torn curtain, which was all his agitation, give the order for m...

Story for the Day: Afternoon Tea

Even the king needs his time alone to reflect: The end of the morning soon came: the bells from the Church purled throughout the capital, announcing the sext to all those without and bringing the riotous recess of all the children within; the markets began bustling with the reboation of midday sales, and while the court would have endured for another hence, the day was too mild and the air too agreeable to sit indoors for more than was good for the indolent minds of the Frewyn nobility. Feet g...

Story for the Day: The Carib

The Draeden, or the small Frewyn Carib, is an important type of hummingbird in Frewyn lore. It is said that the God Diras quieted his first born son Frannach by having a carib sing to him. When Prince Draeden was little, he too had difficulty sleeping as an infant, and one day, whilst King Dorrin was rocking him by the window and trying to lull him to sleep, a carib came to visit and soothe Draeden into a gentle somnolence. King Dorrin took the incident as a blessing from Diras Himself, and i...